also such Americans of country-wide fame as Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and Harrison Gray Otis; and such old-world visitors as
Charles Dickens, Lord Morpeth, Captain Marryat, John Galt, and Fanny
Kemble. He had children growing up--his marriage to Catherine Dunscomb
had taken place in 1801, when he was in his twenty-second year--and for
the benefit of the young people his was practically open house. Public
and private honours were thrust upon him. An assistant alderman from
1824 to 1826, in the latter year he was appointed Mayor. (The Mayor was
not elected until 1834.) William Paulding had preceded him in the
office, and William Paulding succeeded him in 1827. But the Hone
administration was long remembered on account of its civic excellence
and its social dignity. For more than thirty years he served
gratuitously the city's first Bank of Savings, which was established in
1816, and in 1841 he became its president. Governor of the New York
Hospital, trustee of the Bloomingdale Asylum, founder of the Clinton
Hall Association, and of the Mercantile Library, trustee of Columbia
College, of the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, president of
the American Exchange Bank, and of the Glenham Manufacturing Company,
vice-president of the Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and
Dumb, of the American Seamen's Fund Society, of the New York Historical
Society, of the Fuel Saving Society, a director in the Matteawan Cotton
and Machine Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the Eagle
Fire Insurance Company, the National Insurance Company, a member of the
Chamber of Commerce, a manager of the Literary and Philosophical
Society, of the Mechanic and Scientific Association, a founder and a
governor of the Union Club, and a vestryman of Trinity Church--the
wonder is that he found time to write in his Diary at all. According to
Bayard Tuckerman, who edited the Diary and wrote the Introduction to it,
an ordinary day's work for Hone was "to ride out on horseback to the
Bloomingdale Asylum, to return and pass the afternoon at the Bank for
Savings, thence to attend a meeting of the Trinity Vestry, or to preside
over the Mercantile Library Association." "He was never," said Mr.
Tuckerman, "voluntarily absent from a meeting where the interest of
others demanded his presence, and many were the good dinners he lost in
consequence." Again: "He had personal gifts which extended the influence
due to his character. Tall and spare,